


In Disaster's Wake

by Meilan_Firaga



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27297001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/pseuds/Meilan_Firaga
Summary: They always find each other when the dust settles, and they usually find their way to a drink.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27
Collections: Fic In A Box





	In Disaster's Wake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a menace?”

Steve lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and squinted up at the woman standing beside his lounge chair. Agent Natasha Romanov was peering at him over the top of her oversized sunglasses. Most of her hair was tucked up beneath a wide brimmed black hat that looked to have more fabric in its structure than the one piece swimsuit she was wearing with its deep vee cut all the way down to her belly button. A large beach bag dangled from one of her hands, a large red towel peeking over its edge. She drew her sunglasses further down her nose, eyes roaming over him where he was reclined.

“All this on display?” she quipped, waving a hand to indicate all of him. “You’ll be lucky if you don’t give somebody a heart attack with all these muscles glistening in the sun.”

He looked around at the surrounding beach. The tourists in the area were mostly a mix of families and retirees. A few meters away a mother was playing in the surf with her son, oblivious to everything but the joy of time with her family. “I don’t think anybody here is all that concerned about my muscles.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Romanov teased. With a roll of her eyes, she pushed her sunglasses back up the length of her nose, stepped over the end of his chair, and settled herself on the empty lounge at his side. She fished two cold bottles of beer from somewhere in the depths of her bag and passed one to him without looking. “So, why here?”

“It was close,” Steve admitted with a shrug as he accepted the bottle she offered. He twisted off the cap and took a deep swig, staring off into the distance. “Before the war and the serum my best friend and I used to dream about how one day we’d be able to sit on the beach in the sun and just enjoy the sound of the ocean. I figured it was time I did exactly that for the both us. It’s pretty overdue.”

She was quiet for several minutes, sipping daintily at her beer. When she did speak, it wasn’t to spout a sentiment he expected. “Can you still get drunk?”

“That’s a pretty big change of subject.” Steve turned towards her, taking more care in looking over her body language. She was laid out on the chair like a model in a magazine, one knee raised as a spot to balance her beer, but there was a tension in the line of her posture. “Any particular reason why you’re asking.”

“Rogers, we just fought aliens for the sake of the human race,” she explained dryly. “If that’s not a reason to get blindingly drunk, I don’t know what is.”

He couldn’t really come up with an argument against that. He’d be lying if he said that having a few drinks wasn’t something that had crossed his mind since he woke up in the future. He gave her a considering look, then tipped his beer back again.

“I don’t think I can, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to give it a shot.”

~*~*~*~

She sidled up beside him at a dive bar in New York less than a week after they parted ways at Nick Fury’s empty grave. He recognized the scent of her perfume before he actually saw her, his eyes trained instead on the news report scrolling across the bar’s television. The sharks were out in the wake of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s demise. Every television personality in the country wanted a crack at the intelligence agency that had been infiltrated so thoroughly by H.Y.D.R.A. that they’d nearly allowed them to take over the world. It was understandable, of course, but that didn’t make it any less painful to watch.

“So, that really wasn’t your first kiss since 1945?”

He snorted into his mug of beer, took a deep drink, and flagged down the bartender. “Vodka tonic for the lady,” he instructed the man before turning to face her. She was in jeans and a hoodie like she’d been when they were on the run, a cap pulled low over her brow. Her bright red hair was pulled up in a ponytail that had been pulled through the back of her cap. “What brings you down off capitol hill?”

“Well, I did tell them they’d know where to find me,” she mused. The bartender slid her drink across the counter and left them alone. “A little iron bird also might have said something about hunting down H.Y.D.R.A. cells. I figured I’d be of more use if I moved back to the Tower.”

“Decent logic.”

They drank in silence for a while, idly watching the news reports roll past. The bar grew crowded, and Natasha scooted her stool so close that their thighs pressed together. Steve looped an arm over her shoulder when a drunken patron started to move as though he were going to get handsy, shooing the other man off with a vicious glare if only to prevent her from beating the crap badly enough to make the next day’s news. He worked his way through what was probably an entire keg by himself while she downed one vodka tonic after the other.

“You never did answer my question,” she said over the rim of her fifth vodka tonic. She was snugged up against his side, nudging his ribs with her elbow. 

“No, that was not my first kiss since 1945,” Steve insisted.

“So, who was?”

In an instant he was back in that club after she found him on the beach, the bass from songs he didn’t recognize pounding so loud it drowned out the beating of his heart. She’d looped her arms around his neck and swayed them both to the beat, the short curls of her hair brushing against his cheek as she wiggled herself closer and closer. He remembered the taste of her lips— soft and sweet beneath the sharp tang of vodka and cranberries. He remembered wishing desperately that he hadn’t agreed to drink with her, that she’d been sober when she started to whisper filthy things in his ear. And he remembered taking her outside for some air then wrangling her into a cab. He recalled with perfect clarity the way he’d gathered her hair away from her face while she vomited in the bathroom of his hotel room and the way she’d clung to his hand when he finally got her tucked into bed. 

Mostly, he remembered the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when she’d asked about his first kiss since 1945 while they drove a stolen car to New Jersey. She might remember the beach, but she didn’t remember the club. She didn’t remember that kiss on the dance floor, and he couldn’t bring himself to tell her.

“Don’t worry about it, Romanov,” he insisted, taking another swig of his beer. “And stop trying to set me up all the damn time.”

~*~*~*~

It took two weeks after Sokovia for him to track her down.

Before she’d always found him once the latest crisis had faded. After Banner disappeared he wasn’t about to wait until she showed up just as he was starting to relax. He was a pretty good sleuth, but she had years of experience in disappearing on him. In the end, it took a very pointed phone call to Barton to get a decent lead. The expecting father pointed him to a little place in Cleveland, Ohio. From the street all he saw was a cheap mediterranean restaurant, but when he made his way through the kitchen and down a flight of stairs into the basement he found himself in a cozy little bar with three tables, smoky lighting, and a Croatian man in a three piece suit behind the bar.

Natasha was tucked into the only corner that faced the door, her eyes already glassy. He knew that look. She’d be down for the count in an hour. The glass in her hands was full of dark, amber-colored liquid, the rim decorated with a curling slice of orange. He’d never seen her drink liquor that wasn’t clear. He approached her table slowly, giving a distracted wave and shake of his head at the bartender when he gestured to see if Steve wanted a drink.

“You wanna talk about it?” he asked as he pulled out the chair and sat down, deliberately placing his back to the door. He knew by now that he could trust her to alert him if any danger was coming from behind. “Or do you just plan on getting drunk enough that I have to carry you out of here.”

“What’s to talk about?” Natasha tilted up her glass and a quarter of the amber liquid disappeared. “Whether it was Bruce or the Hulk that made it, the choice was pretty clear.”

He shrugged, both unable and unwilling to argue with that. “You know, when we met I never would have figured you to want that choice to go the other way.”

“I just…” she trailed off, and more of her drink disappeared. “I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life.”

“You’re not alone,” Steve insisted. He twisted in his seat and raised a hand to the bartender. He held up two fingers, and nodded when the man questioningly held up a shot glass. “You’ve got the Avengers. Clint. Me.”

“Do I, Steve?” she asked. “Have you?”

“Natasha, I’m gonna make you a promise now that I’ve only ever made to one person before.” He took two shot glasses from the bartender’s tray when he appeared beside their table. One he handed to her, and the other he raised in salute. “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

~*~*~*~

Steve was still trying to plan his invasion of The Raft. He’d been in a cheap motel room for two days, pouring over what paper files he’d managed to come across. Getting there and getting in wouldn’t be a problem, but his exit would go a hell of a lot smoother if he had a little back-up on the way out. After Berlin and then Siberia he didn’t exactly have a rolodex of people he could call. Then he walked out of the bathroom after a shower and found her stretched across his bed reading a magazine.

“You’re a menace, Rogers,” she murmured, flipping through the pages of Cosmopolitan. "Abs like that, out for all the world to see." She didn’t glance up, but he knew she was tracking his movement as he crossed the room to his duffle, towel wrapped around his waist.

“I really hope you’re not here to try and bring me in, Natasha,” he told her while he pulled a shirt over his head. He awkwardly got a pair of boxer briefs on beneath the towel, tugged the towel off, and set about using it to dry his hair. “The idea of fighting you is not high on my to-do list for today.”

“No,” she agreed dryly, “your to-do list is just figuring out how to break a bunch of people out of the most secure prison under U.S. jurisdiction. No big deal.”

“What is that phrase all the kids are using? Go big or go home.” He shrugged, watching as she closed the magazine and looked up at him from beneath her lashes. 

Her expression was pointed. “And where is home now?”

“Surprised you don’t get it.” He tapped his chest just above his heart. “Home’s not a where. It’s made up of whos and the things you’ll do to keep them safe.”

“If you say so,” she snorted. Something in her eyes changed as she gazed at him. “Do you remember that beach after New York?”

Steve’s heart started beating faster, flashes of that damned club popping up in the back of his mind. He’d been struggling to put it out of his mind for years. He cleared his throat, defaulting to teasing her to cover how uncomfortable he was. “I do. I’d never seen a woman throw up that much before.”

“Oh god,” Natasha laughed, her cheeks turning the faintest shade of pink. “Of everything that happened that night _that’s_ what you remember?”

“It was memorable.” He thought of that stolen truck on the way to Jersey and the question he’d wanted to ask her then. “What do you remember?”

“Kissing you on the dance floor.”

He could actually feel his stomach dropping into his shoes. 

“It took me a while to piece it together,” she continued, rising up to her knees on the bedspread. “I thought that part was a drunken fever dream for the longest time, but it was real, wasn’t it?” Her eyes searched his face. She seemed to find what she was looking for, and a smile bloomed across her lips. “I was your first kiss since 1945. Just not in that mall. Right?”

Steve sighed. “Yes,” he confirmed. “It didn’t go any farther than that dance floor, Natasha. You were drunk. I would never take advantage of you like that.”

“Please,” she snorted, waving him off. “Furthest thing from my mind.” She turned from him, moving slowly, and gathered the magazine and several of his papers that had been strewn across the bed. She stacked them neatly on the nightstand and turned back to look him in the eye once more. “I just have one question.”

“What’s that?” he asked, not sure whether to be worried or hopeful. 

Then she smiled, her eyes sparkling, and the hopeful side of him pulled ahead. “Are you ever gonna be the one to kiss me first?”

He did not make her ask twice.


End file.
